Over two decades, Institute for Policy Studies researchers have examined how extremely high levels of compensation affect executive behavior. Such massive jackpots, we’ve found, give executives incentives to behave in ways that may boost short-term profits and expand their own paychecks at the expense of our nation’s long-term economic health. Tax dodging, mass layoffs, reckless financial deals, offshoring jobs, “creative accounting”—all of these appear to boost CEO pay. But they have dealt one body blow after another to the American middle class, leaving a deeply skewed distribution of income and wealth.
Below you can find each report we’ve published over the past 20 years.
Executive Excess 2016: The Wall Street CEO Bonus Loophole
Executive Excess 2015: Money to Burn
Executive Excess 2014: The Obamacare Prescription for Bloated CEO Pay
Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted
Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam’s Pocket
Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging
Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession
Executive Excess 2009: America’s Bailout Barons
Executive Excess 2008: How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay
Executive Excess 2007: The Staggering Social Cost of U.S. Business Leadership
Executive Excess 2006: Defense and Oil Executives Cash in on Conflict
Executive Excess 2005: Defense Contractors Get More Bucks for the Bang
Executive Excess 2004: Campaign Contributions, Outsourcing, Unexpensed Stock Options and Rising CEO Pay
Executive Excess 2003: CEOs Win, Workers and Taxpayers Lose
Executive Excess 2002: CEOs Cook the Books, Skewer the Rest of Us
Executive Excess 2001: Layoffs, Tax Rebates, and the Gender Gap
Executive Excess 2000: Seventh Annual
Executive Excess 1999: A Decade of Executive Excess
Executive Excess 1998: CEOs Gain From Massive Downsizing
Executive Excess 1997: CEOs Gain From Massive Downsizing
Executive Excess 1996: How Wall Street Rewards Job Destroyers
Executive Excess 1995: Workers Lose, CEOs Win (II)
Executive Excess 1994: Workers Lose, CEOs Win